Purgatory Happened
by staceycj
Summary: Tag to 8X05 The converstaion in the car after the end of the episode.


Benny was right, there was a lot that the brothers needed to talk about, and by the looks of Sam he was fairly bursting at the seams to begin the conversation. Dean inwardly sighed. There were things he hadn't missed while being in Purgatory. One of those was having to answer for his actions, having to explain why he cut the head off of the vampire, or why he did it alone, or why he chose that axe, or why he didn't clean the blood and mud off of his face.

On the other side of that coin was the thing that he missed most while being in Purgatory—Sam. And Sam was the one who was at his side right now, was the one who was going to put those questions to Dean and expect answers, answers that Dean didn't quite know if he was able to articulate.

The doors to the car squeaked as the men slammed them shut (Dean was willing to say that Sam was the one who slammed the door the hardest-the car was rocking from the impact.) Normally, he'd say something about Sam treating his baby right, but from the looks of the car, Sam had done alright in the year he had been gone, except for the dog smell of course, and it seemed wrong to chastise the man whom had never given a damn about this car but had taken care of it as if it had been his child.

Dean turned the key and the sound of his baby purring filled the car, and that made a small part of his soul happy and that happy came onto his face in the form of a small smirk.

"What? Do you think this whole thing is funny Dean?" Angry Sam asked from next to him. Dean immediately schooled his face into bland lines and put the car into gear. Dean chose not to say anything, Sam wouldn't understand how something as simple as the car purring would make him smile in the face of Sam's wrath. "You aren't going to answer me are you?"

Dean turned briefly to his brother and sighed. "What do you want me to say Sam?"

"I want you to tell me what in the hell you were thinking going off on your own for a hunt?"

Dean shrugged as he pulled onto the deserted road. "I'd hunted lots of times by myself while you were at Stanford."

Sam seethed. "But you aren't alone now. You ditched me to hunt by yourself."

"I wasn't alone." Dean said mildly.

Sam threw his hands in the air, and they slapped back down onto his thighs. "No. That's right. You were with your friend." Sam said as he put air quotes around the word friend. "A friend, which I think, isn't exactly human."

"No he's not." Dean said matter of factly, his eyes never straying from the road in front of him, and his voice never going beyond his normal register.

"You ditched me for a monster?" Sam asked.

"You did it to me….remember?" Dean asked with bite. Bite he hadn't quite intended but there all the same."

Sam was taken aback, and his anger got the best of him. "Oh, no, we aren't playing this double standard game Dean. When I went with Ruby you gave me all sorts of shit, you even ditched me…"

"No. You ditched me. Told me that I had to trust you, that you knew what you were doing, and then you beat me all to hell, and left me on the floor of a motel room. That's what happened."

"And I was drugged up on demon blood. We both knew that.."

"Don't say it….it wasn't you." Dean said the last mockingly. "I know Sam."

"No. It was me, and I was screwed up. And you're pretty messed up right now too."

"Oh, you think so? Because I think I'm pretty damn clear headed for a man who has spent the last year in Purgatory fighting for his life while his brother, who always swore that he had his back, spent the last year playing house with some chick."

"I thought you were dead!" Sam shouted. "I thought that you were gone! I thought you had finally gone and found some peace! I thought that you were with Dad, Mom, Bobby, and everyone else we've lost and were finally at rest Dean!"

"You thought I was in heaven?"

"Yes Dean I did."

"And you think THAT would make me at peace!? That sissified dreamscape where fantasy is reality and you KNOW that it's not real? You thought THAT would be peaceful to ME?"

"I thought you were with Bobby and Dad and Mom…."

"And you thought I'd rather be with them." Sam didn't respond. "God Sam. I gave my life for yours…"

"I never asked you to do that." Sam said softly looking away from his brother to the night stars whizzing away outside his window. It didn't matter if 100 years passed, hearing his brother say that he'd traded his life for Sam's was still difficult to hear, still difficult to process, and still difficult not to feel guilty about.

Dean snorted. "No. You didn't. But the thought that I could live in a world without you was too damn much for me to take." He gave a small sad laugh. "You've proved often enough that the street doesn't go two ways. I don't know why I'm even shocked that you didn't look for me."

That made Sam's head snap back in his brother's direction. "Do you think so little of me?"

"No. That's the problem. If I thought so little about you then we wouldn't be having this conversation, you'd be dead, and the apocalypse would never have happened, I'd never have spent time in hell…"

"YES!" Sam shouted. "Yes! I get it! I screwed up! I shouldn't have spent time with Ruby! I shouldn't have drank demon blood! I freaking started the apocalypse! I know! Do you have to keep reminding me every time you get the chance?!"

There was silence on the other side of the car after Sam's explosion. The only sound was rubber on asphalt. Sam's heart was racing, his blood was pounding in his ears and it was taking everything he had to keep himself together.

"I wasn't saying it was your fault." Dean said evenly almost quietly. "I was saying that it was mine. That if I had thought less of you Sam, I would have been able to live my life without you. I wouldn't have opened the door for all of that to happen. It is my fault." Dean said without a trace of emotion.

The wind fell right out of Sam's sails and he sagged a little against the car door. Sam sighed and looked out of the window. He was struggling to find the words, the words to articulate how he felt, what he thought, his concerns, his wishes, and his wants. Every time, every single time, he tried to explain himself he sounded selfish, sounded arrogant, sounded vain. And he sensed that this was his opportunity to right those wrongs, sensed that maybe this time he would be able to explain what he had previously thought was unexplainable.

He took a deep breath and began. "I didn't know what to do. Crowley said that I was completely alone. That everyone was gone. He was right you know. Bobby was gone, you were, I thought, dead. And I figured Cass was dead too. There wasn't anyone left. And after your stint in hell I knew that the demons wouldn't deal with me, and the only other thing that might possibly help me would be Lucifer, but I wasn't about to open that box up. I wasn't about to let that evil out on the world, because I knew how mad you would be if I did that to save you. I knew how guilty you would feel if I did that. And I knew you would never forgive me for that.

"If I had known that you were in purgatory, if I knew that, I would have saved you Dean. I would have tried to save you." Sam snorted. "I'm 0-3 or something like that aren't I? I just never seem to make the right choices when it comes to you."

Sam shook his head. "So, I did what I thought you would want me to do. Remember that night, it was just after I got my soul back, we were at Bobby's and we were outside on his porch because he threw us out because he wanted "me time"?" Dean cracked a smile.

"I remember."

"We talked about next time. The next time that one of us was dead. What would we do? What would we do if there was no magic fix, if Cass couldn't bring us back or wouldn't bring us back."

"I remember."

"And we both said that we wanted the other to go at it alone, find a life for himself and live that life."

"I remember."

"I did what you wanted me to do Dean. I finally followed orders. Your orders. You ordered me to take care of myself, and the car. I took care of the car." Sam said the last quietly gently caressing the car door. "I missed you like hell, it hurt like hell to know that you were gone, and there was no body for me to bury this time, no cross to put up to say that my big brother was here, that he loved people and was loved by others, that he was a damn good hunter and he saved a lot of lives. There was nothing. Nothing. So, I wanted to live your legacy, which…" Sam swallowed this was hard to say, it sounded trite, arrogant even, but it was what it was. "I'm your legacy Dean. You raised me. You taught me everything I've ever known. And I wanted the world to see what you had done, see what you had fostered. So, I lived that life. I went out in the world and I lived, I met a woman, yes I did, I loved her just as you taught me to love people, I protected her just like you taught me to protect people, and I tried to be the best Sammy Winchester I could be just like you taught me to be. I was trying…Dean I was trying."

Dean nodded. But Sam wasn't finished.

"And here you are, ditching me for a monster? That isn't you Dean, you don't play ball with monsters. That was something you taught me." Sam snorted. "And I had to learn that the hardest way imaginable." Dean desperately wanted to close his eyes and blink this conversation away."

"He's a friend."

"He's a vampire."

"I was a vampire once, remember?"

"That was a low blow Dean."

"You don't understand Sammy."

"How can _**I**_ possibly not understand?"

"You weren't there."

"Same thing can be said about me and Ruby."

"You were high all of the time, you didn't know what you were doing."

"You were sober, you did know what you were doing. So you don't have an excuse."

Dean stopped trying to reply and just stared out of the windshield. "It was like being at war Sam." Sam turned and listened to his brother. "Benny knew how to get me out of Purgatory, he helped me find Cass, he fought beside me for that year."

"Did you help him get out of purgatory?" Sam asked quietly.

"That was the price. I'd help him, he'd help me."

"And you consider him your friend?"

"Yeah."

"I don't trust him."

"I don't care."

"You wouldn't let me get away with this."

"I'm older."

"That's bull shit."

"It just is Sammy."

"No. It isn't. This is wrong, and you know it is wrong or you wouldn't have hid it from me."

"No, I knew you'd flip out like this."

Sam shook his head at his brother. "What happened to you Dean?"

Dean shrugged. "Purgatory happened to me Sam."


End file.
